>Global Warning / Introduction

Global Warning

The White House may be dragging its heels on The Greatest Environmental Threat facing the planet today. But across the political spectrum, Republicans, Democrats, governors, senators, and industry leaders agree that climate change is for real and must be dealt with—now.

By David Malakoff

 

A decade ago a small crowd of politicians and environmentalists gathered on a steamy summer day outside the alabaster dome of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and peered into a hole in the ground. The earthen cavity was cool and soothing, but the people were hot and bothered. The sapling they were supposed to plunk into the hollow to commemorate a new clean-air law was stuck on a truck in traffic. Turning to a bystander, one sweaty lawmaker compared the delay to the trouble he was having convincing colleagues to take seriously another emerging environmental threat. "At the rate we're going," he quipped, "that little tree will be a redwood by the time we do anything about the greenhouse effect."

Little did that observer, the late Representative George Brown, a feisty California Democrat, know how right he might be. In 1988, just a few years before the tree planting, a prominent NASA climate scientist named James Hansen had appeared before Congress during a record heat wave and sparked a political firestorm by announcing that the science was conclusive: People were warming the earth by pumping carbon dioxide (CO2) from tailpipes and smokestacks into the atmosphere, where the gases trapped heat like the glass in a greenhouse. Television newscasts and newspapers led with the story, moving an issue that had drifted in political backwaters squarely into the mainstream.

Since then researchers have nailed down the link between rising CO2 concentrations and temperatures. Recent records show that the 1990s, for instance, was the warmest decade in more than a century, and that 1998 boasted the highest average global temperatures ever recorded. And forecasters predict that average global temperatures could rise up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit during the next century if CO2 concentrations continue to increase. Among the possible consequences: rising sea levels that cause coastal communities to sink beneath the waves like a modern Atlantis, crop failures of biblical proportions, and once-rare killer storms that start to appear with alarming regularity.

Six years ago, in a bid to head off such trouble, the United States and 83 other nations negotiated the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to begin curbing carbon emissions. But U.S. efforts to combat global warming have been stuck in idle since President George W. Bush took office in 2001. He promptly dumped the Kyoto pact, arguing that even its modest requirement—reducing U.S. emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012—was too costly for an economic superpower that produces one-quarter of the world's CO2 emissions. In a time-honored Washington stalling tactic, the administration then called for an expanded research program and unveiled a largely voluntary initiative that, even if successful, would still allow U.S. emissions to grow by more than 10 percent during the next decade. In the meantime, White House officials continue to downplay what scientists know about climate change in favor of what they don't by watering down government reports, despite growing warnings that warming is already affecting everything from mountain glaciers to tropical ocean reefs (see True Nature, "Meltdown," and Global Warning/Coral Reefs, "Color Blindness").

"Most everybody in the world but the Bush administration thinks that global warming is potentially harmful," says Senator Jim Jeffords (I-VT), a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Ironically, the White House's cold shoulder has only heated up the climate-policy debate. Despite predictions that the U.S. departure would doom the Kyoto pact, 119 countries have ratified the agreement anyway, and approval by Russia would push it into force.

At home, meanwhile, climate advocates have taken their case beyond the Beltway, to living rooms, boardrooms, courtrooms, and statehouses, with often surprising results. Public-opinion polls chart rising recognition of the warming threat, and a majority support government action. A growing number of states and localities are forging ahead with climate policies of their own. Some have even taken the Bush administration to court over its inaction.

Such developments haven't gone unnoticed in Congress. Earlier this year the growing pressure forced a reluctant Republican leadership to schedule the Senate's first-ever vote on legislation to limit CO2 emissions, sponsored by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT).

The bipartisan duo's plan aims to cut CO2 emissions from all of the nation's major sources—power plants, vehicles, and industrial plants—to 1990 levels by 2016. To meet that timetable, they want to harness an emissions trading scheme that has already proven successful in reducing the sulfur dioxide emissions that cause acid rain. The process would begin by setting a cap on total national CO2 emissions that would shrink over time. Then each polluter would get a permit to emit a certain amount of CO2. Owners who find ways to reduce their emissions below their permitted levels would be free to sell the surplus to other players in the market. Such a "cap-and-trade" system "is in our own best environmental and economic interests," says Lieberman, and "will also earn respect and support around the world."

However, with the historic vote approaching as Audubon went to press, prospects looked dim. Climate advocates took heart, though, noting that the last time the Senate took a climate-related vote, in 1997, not a single member supported action.

Still, at least 27 states have adopted policies to take on climate change, reports the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, in Arlington, Virginia. New England states and neighboring Canadian provinces, for instance, have promised to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2010. New Jersey aims to cut emissions statewide by 3.5 percent by 2005. Oregon is requiring polluters to avoid or offset some carbon emissions. California will require more cars that don't produce CO2. (Industry is challenging the rule.)

But the initiative attracting by far the most attention is being led by New York Governor George Pataki, a moderate Republican and a staunch ally of President Bush. Last April Pataki invited 10 governors, from Maine to Maryland, to develop a regional cap-and-trade system to cut CO2 emissions from one key source: power plants fueled by coal, oil, or natural gas. "The debate about global warming has often been marked by confrontation," he said in unveiling the idea, which echoes the McCain-Lieberman approach. "We are pursuing a course of cooperation."

So far every invited state except Maryland has opted to participate, with the aim of having some sort of agreement in place by 2005. But it's not clear how stringent the pact will be, skeptics say, and any trading system could take years to implement. Still, Pataki's effort shows "that states are filling the leadership vacuum and forcing the action," says Michael Marvin, head of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy in Washington, D.C. "If members of Congress see state policy makers doing something and surviving politically, it makes it a lot easier for them to act."

If Pataki is trying to grow a financial carrot for power companies to combat global warming, officials in other states are trying to whittle a legal stick. Recently the attorneys general of Maine, Connecticut, California, and Massachusetts announced that they will sue the Bush administration to force it to regulate CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act. The Clinton administration had decided that the law covered carbon dioxide; the current administration and its allies disagree.

After announcing his state's participation in the suit against the Bush administration, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said: "Thankfully, New England's governors have recognized carbon dioxide's danger and are acting to reduce greenhouse gases even as the federal government abdicates its responsibility."

Like Pataki's plan, these states' lawsuits could ultimately be overtaken by action in Congress, which has been debating a major overhaul of clean-air laws. Most of the proposals—including the White House's Clear Skies initiative—focus on just a trio of pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury. But a few add carbon dioxide to the mix. And one of those "four pollutant" bills—advanced by Republican Senators Lincoln Chafee (RI) and Judd Gregg (NH), and Democrat Thomas Carper (DE)—has begun to attract support from Republicans outside the Northeast. Last summer, for instance, Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander joined the Carper camp, saying the White House proposal did not "go far enough, fast enough."

Alexander's decision was driven, in part, by business executives and investors worried that the administration's delaying tactics could create market mayhem. In particular, they worry that in the absence of a clear U.S. climate policy, U.S. companies could soon face a dizzying and expensive patchwork of state and international rules. The European Union is already setting up its own cap-and-trade system for CO2. "Investors loathe uncertainty," says Doug Cogan, who has studied how corporations are responding to the issue for the Investor Responsibility Research Center in Washington, D.C. "Who is going to invest a billion dollars in a power plant without knowing if they are going to have to spend even more later to comply with carbon controls?"

Indeed, some two dozen companies, apparently deciding that a cap is inevitable, have recently adopted (and in many cases surpassed) emissions-reduction targets. British Petroleum, for example, has cut its carbon emissions by 10 percent below 1990 levels without obvious economic hardship.

Such developments fit a well-worn script, says Eileen Claussen, the head of the Pew Center and a 30-year veteran of environmental-policy struggles. "It's always the same," she sighs. "First the other side says the problem is not a problem. Then they concede it's a small problem. Then they claim it's too expensive to solve. Then they get on with it and make a deal." It's time, she says, "to start dealing."

Trees, of course, don't follow such debates. The oak planted in that hole so many years ago is now just a teenager, still nowhere near the size of the redwood a grumbling congressman once envisioned. But its annual rings continue to record the passage of time and changes in climate. The question is whether that arboreal history will ultimately document the moment when political leaders took action to cool the earth, or mark our failure to confront one of the planet's biggest threats.

 

David Malakoff is a correspondent for Science magazine.